In Sunday’s presidential election, the voters of Honduras chose Partido Nacional candidate Pepe Lobo, who won 58%, compared to 33% for Partido Liberal candidate Elvin Santos. Both candidates supported the removal of former president Manuel Zelaya, who had violated Articles 373 and 374 of the Honduran Constitution and forfeited his office by attempting to arrange a second term for himself. Zelaya had called for a boycott of the election, and predicted that an abstention rate of over 50% would make the election illegitimate. As it turned out, 61% of enrolled voters cast ballots–an increase from the 2005 presidential election (which Zelaya won with 49.9%), and in which only 53% of enrolled voters had participated. In the 2001 election, participation was 64%; in 1997 it was 72%, and in 1993 it was 65%.
Although Zelaya had won on the Partido Liberal line, his attempt to entrench himself in office made him anathema to the vast majority of Partido Liberal legislators.
Update: Since some readers were apparently unclear about what I meant by “decisive win for democracy,” I meant that a solid majority of Hondurans repudiated by Zelaya by going to the polls to vote overwhelmingly for two candidates who both repudiated Zelaya’s efforts to destroy the Constitution. Which of the two of those candidates got the most votes was irrelevant to the fact that democracy itself triumphed.
ef says:
Awesome. Anyone know any entrenched liberals around here that could use the same treatment?
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November 30, 2009, 6:14 amRich says:
Don’t know but What are the chances that our government will call the election illegal and again call for the reinstatment of Zelaya. Can’t have a Marxist throw out of office yiou know
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November 30, 2009, 8:02 amAnonymous123456 says:
Democracy succeeded and Obama failed — two great outcomes!
Let’s just hope that our Supreme Court will be brave enough to stop Reverend Wright’s fascist disciple after he’s voted out office in 2012 and refuses to leave.
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November 30, 2009, 8:14 amTamerlane says:
Sounds like the people of Honduras have told Manuel, Fidel, Lulu, Hugo, and their good buddy Barak where to go.
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November 30, 2009, 8:53 amStrict says:
“Sounds like the people of Honduras have told Manuel, Fidel, Lulu, Hugo, and their good buddy Barak where to go.”
What does Ehud have to do with this?
Before we celebrate “democracy,” I think it’s important to know if this Pepe guy has ties to death squads, like Mel or Micheletti do.
Anybody who surrounds himself with “former” death squad members and leaders is not to be considered a champion of democracy. An election of such a person is not a win for democracy.
So, was Pepe Lobo a member of Battalion 3–16? Will his intelligence and security agents and police apparti be run by Battalion 3–16 veterans? I hope not!
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November 30, 2009, 9:36 amwm13 says:
I’m sure Harold Koh is already drafting a new secret legal opinion–not to be read by peasants like me–explaining how elections that come out wrong aren’t really elections at all.
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November 30, 2009, 9:45 amT. Gracchus says:
You do not explain why the election outcome is a victory for democracy. The election turnout seems to be, but there is no particular reason why the outcome strengthens democracy. On the one issue you identify — the leading candidates both repudiated Zelaya’s conduct.
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November 30, 2009, 10:05 amDjDiverDan says:
This is good news — but when will the major media outlets stop referring to Zelaya’s ouster by the Honduras Supreme Court in accordance with the Honduras Constitution a “Military Coup”? I don’t think I’ve seen one story on major TV News outlets, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, et al., that didn’t call this a “military coup”, and not a one even mentioned that the Honduras Supreme Court ruled that Zelaya forfeited his office by violating the Honduran Constitution. It’s really no wonder voters in this country are ignorant — they can’t rely on the major media outlets to accurately report the news.
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November 30, 2009, 10:12 amJust Dropping By says:
Don’t know but What are the chances that our government will call the election illegal and again call for the reinstatment of Zelaya. Can’t have a Marxist throw out of office yiou know
I suppose you could read or listen to any of the media coverage about the subject today, but why give up on being an ignorant twit when it allows you to make such witty observations?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/americas/05briefs-Honduras.html
Washington’s top envoy to Latin America, Thomas A. Shannon Jr., told CNN en Español that the United States would recognize the elections even if the Honduran Congress decided against returning Mr. Zelaya to power.
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November 30, 2009, 10:19 amtroll_dc2 says:
We are supporting the outcome. It took us a while to realize that Zelaya’s ouster was not via a traditional coup, but we are there now.
From The Washington Post:
It really would be nice if the people who do not like Obama would spend even just a minute to check the facts before they pontificate.
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November 30, 2009, 10:43 amRoger Hollander says:
A victory for democracy? That’s a cruel joke. More a victory for the the entrenched oligarchy and the US owned military. Democracy cannot be based upon violence (the illegal kidnapping of a president, censoring the media, arresting and beating opposition leaders) and lies (that Zelaya was attempting to entrench himself in the presidency when all he was doing was proposing a popular consultation, which had already occurred successfully in Venezuela and Ecuador). Watch and see, under the Honduras phony “restored democracy” the rich will get richer, and the poor poorer. You cannot simply hold an election under the management of an oppressive, foreign and corporate dominated regime, and call it genuine democracy.
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November 30, 2009, 10:44 amRob in the UK says:
It strikes me that one can welcome what appears to be a popular endorsement of constitutional propriety and the election of a President for 2010 — 2014, holding the pre-election claims of impending ballot-rigging to be by all appearances hyperbole, whilst at the same time deploring the actions of the military back in June.
Sr. Zelaya proposed holding a referendum on election day to establish whether the people supported the holding of a Constituent Assembly; so his successor would be chosen on the same day that issue was decided, hardly the best way to “arrange a second term for himself”.
Quite what the legality of that proposal was seems to be somewhat murky: it’s surely arguable that the outcome of a Constituent Assembly — if (1) the Assembly itself were approved in the popular vote, and (2) it actually produced anything — would be the replacement of the 1982 Constitution as amended with a 2010 Constitution, not the further amendment of the 1982 Constitution — so providing a way round the provisions of Art. 374 preventing the amendment of certain articles of the 1982 Constitution and Art. 239 disbarring someone from being/continuing as President. That said, I readily admit I don’t have a thorough grasp of Honduran Constitutional precedent.
However, under Art. 205 (20), it’s the Congress that has the power to approve or invalidate acts of the Executive, and under Art. 208 (5) the Permanent Commission of the Congress is designated the recipient of complaints of inconstitutionality.
The Constitution appears to be silent as to how/why an incumbent President can be removed from office (other than Art. 239) — but having members of the Armed Forces take him to the airport and force him to leave the country must surely be a greater affront to constitutional propriety than suggesting asking the population to approve the setting up of a new Constituent Assembly.
And I think it’s fair to say that Sr. Zelaya had made himself unpopular with many Partido Liberal legislators well before discussion of a Constituent Assembly became prominent, by turning his back on the elite the two main parties traditionally support, and adopting policies aimed more at the poor majority.
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November 30, 2009, 10:58 amSam Hall says:
That act was prohibited by the Honduras Constitution which is why the Supreme Court removed him from office.
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November 30, 2009, 11:01 amDave N. says:
Roger Hollander certainly proved his leftist bona fides. He has all the talking points down plus he manages to call Chavas’ dictatorship a “popular consultation.” Wow. I like that Orwellian phrase. Take over, beat up and lock up the opposition and then call it “popular consultation.”
Oh, and it helps if you are virulently anti-American. Then you can have “popular consultation” all you want. I guess Cuba has been enjoying “popular consultation” for 50 years now.
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November 30, 2009, 11:02 amArthurKirkland says:
The posted information does not begin to support the headline.
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November 30, 2009, 11:06 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Honduras election results in decisive win for democracy -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by bmqmen, Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: Honduras election results in decisive win for democracy: In Sunday’s presidential election, the voters of Hondu.. http://bit.ly/524G3h [...]
JKB says:
This year started on such a bright note for the marxists. Their Obama-buddy was taking over the US and going well to work on redistributing income. But then those cheeky Hondurans reacted quickly and decisively to what should have been a routine take over. The Marxist Club rallied even revealing Obama’s, heretofore, secret membership. But even the threats of a sullied US government failed to bring the Hondurans in line. Now, given the opportunity to choose correctly, the Honduran people chose otherwise to their credit. Just 11 months ago, it was all so bright now the marxists move into winter with a defeat and an increasingly battered US champion. Even the global warming meme is turning cold on them.
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November 30, 2009, 12:31 pmKazinski says:
AK:
The posted information does not begin to support the headline.
Free and fair elections with a robust turnout are a win for democracy, even when Marxist would-be dictators aren’t allowed to subvert the process.
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November 30, 2009, 12:55 pmArthurKirkland says:
Of the reported turnouts, this was the second-lowest.
Robust turnout?
Decisive win for democracy?
Why is it so difficult for someone who leans right to say in a straightforward manner ‘I’m glad the right-winger won’ — or, failing that, to refrain from speaking in strange code to attempt to express that point?
Until someone explains this, I will guess that the answer is ‘hedging bets in case the death squads become a PR problem.’
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November 30, 2009, 1:02 pmKazinski says:
AK,
Turnout in the US Presidential election in 2008, was 56.8%. That was the highest in 40 years. That was considered robust.
Honduras does have higher turnouts than US elections. But whichever way you slice it, a 61% turnout is robust enough to reflect the will of the people and elect a legitimate government.
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November 30, 2009, 1:11 pmArthurKirkland says:
And here, apparently, is part of what a legitimate government exercising a decisive win for democracy looks like.
The photograph depicts, at most, half of the relevant context . . . but it would be interesting to know what triggered the tear gas, water cannons and armored vehicles.
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November 30, 2009, 1:35 pmJohn Moore says:
Why is it so difficult for those leaning left to accept a democratic result of a fair election when it is presented to them? For whatever reason, the majority of the people of Honduras do not want Zelaya.
So this leads us to the question: why do so many on the left say nice things about Democracy as a theory but hate it in reality?
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November 30, 2009, 1:52 pmtroll_dc2 says:
It works both ways, you know. It is a question of whether the right outcome was reached, sort of like a court decision.
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November 30, 2009, 2:00 pmConnecticut Lawyer says:
To Roger Hollander: Your premise, that dictatorships cannot sponsor true elections, is false and repudiated by history. If you recall, both South Korea and Taiwan at one time were ruled by military dictatorships. Eventually, those dictatorships held elections and today both countries are functioning democracies. The solution to dictatorship is to conduct a fair election. Otherwise, there could never be an peaceful end to dictatorhip. W
The election in Honduras was observed by several hundred international observers and I have yet to read anything that suggests it wasn’t at least as fair as most elections in that part of the world. That should end America’s, and your, interest in the matter. A fair election was held and the people spoke. There’s nothing left for you or Mr. Obama to say about it. Whether the new government has the same enthusiasm for redstributing the wealth as you or Mr. Chavez is irrelevant.
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November 30, 2009, 2:12 pmmojo says:
Jeeze, where’s the fun in THAT?
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November 30, 2009, 2:15 pmBen P says:
Interesting that from “The people elected one of two candidates both of whom supported Zelaya’s ouster” to “the majority of the people do not want Zelaya.”
Snark aside, the result is actually pretty interesting.
Both main Political Parties in Honduras are what you might call “establishment” parties. They’re closely associated with the more urban and more wealthy parts of Honduran society. Zelaya was PLH, but essentially seperated from his own party to the left. PLH also controlled the majority of the legislature, and Micheletti and the cabinet that replaced him were also all PLH.
I think regardless of whether you accept the legal justification for Zelaya’s ouster, the replacement government did some controversial things afterward including removing Zelaya from the country, imposing a media blackout and using significant force against pro-zelaya demonstrations.
In the election, the party that lost was not just nominally Zelaya’s party, but the party that has also been in control of the replacement government for the last 5–6 months. Which is what makes this an interesting outcome. If you want to talk about this you have to talk about not just whether the people were reacting to Zelaya, but reacting to the interim government as well.
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November 30, 2009, 2:16 pmDilan Esper says:
Nothing wrong with the election. I wish the Hondurans well.
But the reason why we called the removal of Zelaya by the army and forced exile to be a coup is because the rest of the region– including right-wing governments– considered it to be one. And clueless conservatives in the US with no inkling of Latin American history and how Latin Americans feel about the military removing civilian presidents in the middle of the night and putting them on planes decided they wanted to buck the regional consensus and support the coup.
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November 30, 2009, 2:32 pmGuy says:
Without commenting on Honduras’ recent Constitutional crisis. I don’t see how comparing the turnout to that of the United States is informative. The U.S. tends to have low turnout rates (usually explained as a result of political stability and voter complacency), so it was a relative “win for democracy”. Also, it was 61% of enrolled voters, according to the chart at the URL in my name, the 2008 turnout of 56.8% is of the voting age population (which is the more appropriate measure). The percent of registered voters who turned out for the 2008 election was, according to the source cited at the Wikipedia article on “Voter turnout” was 63%, higher than this turnout.
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November 30, 2009, 2:40 pmSeamus says:
It’s interesting that the “US owned” military failed to get the memo that the US wasn’t going to support their overthrow of Zelaya.
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November 30, 2009, 2:52 pmEAM says:
It’s very doubtful that the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) figure of 61.3% will hold. The firm that TSE hired to do exit polling, Fundación Hagamos Democracia, reports 47.6% participation rate. In any case, TSE is reporting based on sample precincts, thus the real numbers won’t be known for a while.
Also of note is that many Hondurans cast protest votes. Tiempo published a breakdown today, and the “votos blanco” and “votos nulos” add up to 6.38% of the votes cast (per TSE figures).
Meanwhile, The Frente de Resistencia is claiming a 65–70% abstension rate.
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November 30, 2009, 3:10 pmjeffry house says:
I stopped supporting Zelaya when he showed himself uninterested in complying with legal rulings from the Supreme Court.
Latin America has had enough Presidential strongmen who think they can govern with impunity.
Honduras is a deeply unjust society; but Zelaya was unlikely to do anything meaningful about that. Why was he risking everything on a “constitutional consultation” rather than putting forward some real reform, say land reform? Zelaya was a phony populist. He has more support outside Honduras than inside it.
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November 30, 2009, 3:15 pmFausta’s Blog » Blog Archive » The Honduran election Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean says:
[...] Honduras election results in decisive win for democracy [...]
troll_dc2 says:
The outcome is a good one, but Kopel’s headline goes too far given the relatively light turnout and the number of protest votes. This should not concern other countries, but you can be sure that a number of them will refuse to recognize the outcome, even if they cannot do anything about it.
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November 30, 2009, 4:28 pmHerb Bumgarner says:
Outstanding results for my friends in Honduras...
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November 30, 2009, 5:08 pmef says:
was proposing a popular consultation ...
that is not allowed under the constitution on a matter that is specifically forbidden under the constitution
which had already occurred successfully in Venezuela
that has resulted in Chavez achieving exactly what everyone feared Zelaya would do if he succeded, has caused no end of economic hardships in Venezuela so I don’t think that’s a ringing endorsement.
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November 30, 2009, 5:08 pmLeo Marvin says:
The complaints about Roger Hollander’s comment are justified, but they’d be a lot more persuasive if any of the complainers had also been moved to call out the equally obnoxious and I’d argue even nuttier one by Anonymous123456:
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November 30, 2009, 5:50 pmDave N says:
Leo Marvin,
I’m in. I consider Anonymous123456’s comment to be more offensive than Roger Hollander’s. Overheated rhetoric is wrong regardless of the source or the point of view.
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November 30, 2009, 6:34 pmSarcastro says:
[Thing is, Anonymous123456’s comment is too crazy for anyone to pay attention except for dorks like myself. Hollander’s was dumb, but just this side of that line.]
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November 30, 2009, 6:46 pmArthurKirkland says:
I do not question the result of the election in Honduras (although that position could be changed by evidence). The rancher appears to have won the election and should be recognized as the new president. If voters punished the former president’s party for his behavior, that seems sensible.
I see no evidence, however, that this election was a “decisive win for democracy” or anything similar, or any more a win for democracy than any of the preceding elections. I see no evidence the new president will be good (or bad) for Honduras.
Let’s hope, though, that he can accomplish more than loosing tear gas and water cannons on certain constituents.
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November 30, 2009, 7:35 pmJohn Moore says:
Err... a “decisive win for Democracy” is judged by the outcome of the election? I sorta thought that a fair and open election WAS a “decisive win for democracy.”
Honduras, like most of Latin America, suffers from huge inequities — which date historically back to the Spanish Conquest and have significant racial factors. Unfortunately, because these societies are far from perfect, too many leftists, for too many years, have cheered anyone who claims the mantle of representative of the poor — no matter what sort of demagogue or tyrant. Zelaya pretty clearly wants to pull an Hugo Chavez on Honduras.
How many leftists here suport Chavez now? How many supported him before? Let’s see an honest show of fingers.
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November 30, 2009, 8:03 pmShoe says:
Takes balls to call a President leaning over backwards bailing out irresponsibly operated American banks to save them a “Marxist.” Takes balls.
That’s all I’m saying.
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November 30, 2009, 9:11 pmgeokstr says:
What would you call a President that personally helped the left execute a Cloward-Piven strategy to force American banks to make trillions in irresponsible loans to create a crisis that would be too good to pass up?
A capitalist?
I’m just saying.
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November 30, 2009, 9:56 pmArthurKirkland says:
If every election that does not appear to have been rigged, with lower turnout than average, constitutes a “decisive win for democracy,” this Honduran election appears to warrant the headline.
‘Zelaya pretty clearly wants to pull a Hugo Chavez on Honduras?’ So far, his strategery is unimpressive, to the point at which he seems to be about as much a threat to people of good will as G.W. Bush is these days.
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November 30, 2009, 10:02 pmGringo says:
And you saw no incongruence whatsoever in such paradigms of democracy as Chávez, Ortega, and Castro being the strongest initial voices against the “coup”? Are you aware of what occurred when Zelaya went to Mexico ? After all, you are not a clueless conservative. An alternative explanation is that Chávez had his ALBA people lined up, and the other governments in Latin America were reluctant to take a stand against Chávez, because standing up to Chávez results in suitcases of money being channeled to left-wing forces in the country.
A point follows about “clueless conservatives.” Before I worked in Latin America, I was a progressive of the left. The left wing catechisms on Latin America did not fit the facts on the ground. My time in Latin America turned me from a progressive of the left into an evil right winger.
I highly recommend a book by the Venezuelan journalist Carlos Rangel:Del Buen Salvaje al Buen Revolucionario. I read it in Spanish, but it is available in English:The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States.I also liked reading De Polonia A Nicaragua.
When you have read such books, I would consider you much more qualified qualified than you currently are to be able to freely label people as clueless about Latin America. ¿Me entendés?
Here is an essay on the Honduran election from Venezuela News and Views.
Have you read the Library of Congress report on Honduras? Methinks Senator Kerry was rather clueless in trying to put it down. But what could we expect from someone who kowtowed to Daniel Ortega a quarter centutry ago?
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December 1, 2009, 12:08 amMitchell J. Freedman says:
Folks, let’s understand one thing: Zelaya was not proposing a second term for himself. He was proposing a way for the populace to have a public discussion through a resolution as to how to eventually look at changing the constitution at some point in the future–after Zelaya’s term ended and after he was out of office. That was it. And for this, he was deported from his own country and pushed out of office in what was definitely a coup.
Second, anyone really concerned with democratic or republican values (notice I refer to systems, not American political parties) would find the Honduran constitution to be far less than satisfactory in reflecting those values, particularly in not allowing any plebiscites to make changes to the constitution–and the one term for president rule itself. To say “Oh the rules are there to stop strong men from undermining democracy” is a joke. That was not why it put in place by military dictators in the 1980s as they handed over some semblance of political openness. It was designed to keep crippled the nascent open government from being effective in challenging an economic oligarchy or military power inside Honduras.
Some “win” for “democracy” when people can be prodded into believing a guy like Zelaya was the danger to open government in Honduras...That is instead a rather dismal loss.
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December 1, 2009, 12:41 amLeo Marvin says:
I hoped/figured you would be. ;)
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December 1, 2009, 1:04 amGop Sucks says:
Just remember Obama is president and not ditsy Palin or Mccain. No need to be upset because your people did not win. Suck it up.
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December 1, 2009, 1:32 amGop Sucks says:
Just remember Obama is president and not ditsy Palin or Mccain. No need to be upset because your people did not win. Suck it up.
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December 1, 2009, 1:33 amLeo Marvin says:
I thought you liked Bush. Calling him a Marxist seems a bit much.
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December 1, 2009, 1:53 amLeo Marvin says:
Serious question. With that screen name, I assume you don’t do this to persuade anyone, so what’s the point? The sport of the fight? If so, why not a site where wingnuts are the rule rather than the exception?
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December 1, 2009, 2:09 amKazinski says:
Huh? What better way to start down the road of nationalizing the banks? Bailing out Wall Street was not the act of a capitalist. And that is aimed as much at Bush as it is at Obama. They both screwed up. And we got 1 trillion in extra debt (hopefully that is the extent of it) and 10% unemployment out of it. And we’ll likely have another 5–6 years of anemic growth as a result.
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December 1, 2009, 2:32 amgeokstr says:
Leo, why not just come right out and say it — you have no idea who Cloward and Piven are, or what role the CCoC had in pushing the banks to make bad loans long before Bush was a gleam in Rove’s eye. I’m trying to be charitable, because if you do know those things...
And you, like all leftists, love to claim that conservatives adored Bush. Not so. We were huge critics of his wild spending, of the prescription drug fiasco, of his amnesty proposals, of Harriet Miers, and many other things. Many of us weren’t thrilled with the Iraq War either. It has come out relatively recently that he was quite dismissive in private about his conservative base.
Except for tax cuts, the WOT, and Roberts/Alito, he was pretty much on your side, which is why I could never understand your visceral, pathological hatred of him. Musta been those danged hanging chads or something...
I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about politics, but I for one was unaware that Bush was also pushing this “affordable housing for everyone” meme too, but at least he made some attempts to rein in Fannie/Freddie. If more conservatives had known that, I’ll bet we would have opposed him on that too. After all, conservatives are the ones that understand that there is no free lunch. Liberals are the ones who think that if you can steal the price of your lunch from everyone else, then it really is free.
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December 1, 2009, 9:14 amgeokstr says:
So you and he contend. But the vote he was pushing was way back in June (and we’ll ignore the government’s contention that they found computers with the “vote results” already on them). After claiming overwhelming victory in a June vote, any guarantees you can give that next he would not have demanded to be on the November ballot?
The “deportation” is the only thing you have going for this “coup” story. Their constitution already said quite clearly that he will be removed from power for just proposing to change the constitution, for the reasons stated below. As an attorney, I thought you knew everything about laws already.
It is after all, their constitution, not yours, so how they reflect anything is their business. It is my understanding that with a very few exceptions, including the one Zelaya violated, that the entire rest of the constitution could be amended by legislative action, so if Zelaya was proposing to amend the constitution, the only justification would be to amend those few things hard-coded into it. Thus he “couped” himself.
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December 1, 2009, 9:29 amStrict says:
“The “deportation” is the only thing you have going for this “coup” story.”
Yeah, but isn’t it a strong “thing”? Just because it’s the “only thing” doesn’t mean it it’s not determinative. The single defining feature of the coup in Haiti under George W. Bush was the deportation of Aristide. As US-trained and US-armed Guy Phillipe was finishing his month-long massacre tour of the Haitian countryside and finally entering Port Au Prince to seize the presidential palace, US commandos entered and seized Aristide. They deported him to the Central African Republic, allegedly for his own safety (although it clearly looked like the US troops were aiding the violent coup).
And besides, there was more than deportation. It wasn’t the only thing. The military was involved (not police). The interim government suspended the constitution. It appears that Zelaya was not the only one who violated the Constitution. Not that I really care that the guy is out of office, but it looked and smelled a lot like a coup.
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December 1, 2009, 9:56 amHonduran Democracy Survived Onslaught By Leftist Cabal : Conservative Compendium says:
[...] claims of pro-Zelaya propaganda, Hondurans impressively turned out at a rate greater than 60% to elect a decidedly non-leftist candidate. Although the Obama administration recently backed off its [...]
Richard Aubrey says:
Anybody who’s been paying attention knows this was not a coup. Therefore, anybody who claims it is is being disingenuous. (Q. Can one be accidentally disingenuous or does the definition require being deliberate?)
Zelaya could have waited until he was out of office and pushed his amendment legally, as could probably every other citizen of Honduras.
He broke the law, which is usually considered a bad thing unless it’s your client who’s paid up front in which case it’s a “whatever”.
The military deposed him because that’s their job under the constitution.
The court issued the order because that’s their job.
Zelaya got everything coming to him. Deportation is not the same as, say, jailing him. Food’s better.
So, despite those who would prefer the lefty’s favorite one-man-one-vote-once thing, the Honduran constitution functioned as designed.
Tough, guys. Deal.
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December 1, 2009, 10:13 amStrict says:
Richard,
You don’t have to be a Zelaya supporter (which I’m not) to see that what happened in Honduras had several of the hallmarks of a “coup.”
Whether Zelaya “deserved it” is irrelevant to whether this was a coup.
Deportation is better than domestically jailing him because...he would have access to food? I don’t follow this at all.
Is shutting down media (blacking out television and radio and arresting leaders of the media) typical of simply arresting someone for a violation? No, it’s typical of a coup.
There are two “semantic” arguments against calling this a “coup.” The first is that a coup must involve a “small number of people.” The second is that a coup must be in contravention of a country’s laws or constitution.
The first definition is fairly useless. While the abstract, legal “removal” of Zelaya was not against the law, the actual, physical removal of Zelaya was indeed against the law. Under the second definition, this was a coup. Under everyday common understanding of what coups are, this was probably a coup.
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December 1, 2009, 10:39 amArthurKirkland says:
Why not focus on the many positive elements of this episode?
Honduras, which would benefit from progress in many respects, stumbled near the end of Zelaya’s term; neither Zelaya nor his opponents handled it well. But Honduras recovered, to the point at which a successor appears to have been elected in a fair contest. Zelaya’s party appears to have been punished.
If the successor, who leans right, leans too far in too-familiar manner (media suppression, abuse of dissenters, death squads, etc.), it is fortunate that the current U.S. administration is likely to resist, rather than to encourage, such misconduct. Instead of shipping Jeep-mounted machine guns, boxcards of cattle prods and shady “military/political advisors,” this administration would likely punish Honduras were its leader to choose brutal repression, to attempt to misappropriate power, or the like.
I hope Honduras accomplishes the progress that would benefit its citizens. I am proud that the United States seems more likely to promote than to hinder that progress, at least in current circumstances.
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December 1, 2009, 11:25 amGringo says:
Here is my “everyday common understanding” of a coup: it puts the military in charge, as in General Martinez becomes General President Martinez. Such as: Velasco in Peru, Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina, Banzer in Bolivia,(Colonel) Natusch in Bolivia, Meza in Bolivia. Military people assume many cabinet positions. (Not necessarily all cabinet positions: see Martinez de Hoz under Videla.) This did not occur in Honduras.
Another point about coups. If they remove a democratically elected leader, they shut down the also democratically elected legislature. This did not occur in Honduras.
The legal removal of Zelaya from his office “was not against the law,” as you admit. That doesn’t sound like a coup to me.
You are correct about deportation of Zelaya being against the law. The army admitted it messed up here. One problem being there wasn’t much precedent here.
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December 1, 2009, 11:58 amDilan Esper says:
And you saw no incongruence whatsoever in such paradigms of democracy as Chávez, Ortega, and Castro being the strongest initial voices against the “coup”? Are you aware of what occurred when Zelaya went to Mexico ? ’
Felipe Calderon, a Mexican conservative, condemned the coup along with the rest of the OAS.
The reason you guys are clueless is you have no idea of what the military removing civilian politicians in the middle of the night means to many Latin Americans– including right wing Latin Americans who also remember left wing military coups.
The condemnation of the OAS was indicative of this– it wasn’t just Chavez who said this was wrong.
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December 1, 2009, 1:51 pmDilan Esper says:
Here is my “everyday common understanding” of a coup: it puts the military in charge, as in General Martinez becomes General President Martinez. Such as: Velasco in Peru, Pinochet in Chile, Videla in Argentina, Banzer in Bolivia,(Colonel) Natusch in Bolivia, Meza in Bolivia. Military people assume many cabinet positions. (Not necessarily all cabinet positions: see Martinez de Hoz under Videla.) This did not occur in Honduras.
How about Fujimori shutting down the Peruvian Congress? Just about every Peruvian I know calls that a “golpe”, i.e., coup. And yet it nominally left a civilian government in power.
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December 1, 2009, 1:54 pmRichard Aubrey says:
The reason that being deported beats being in jail is that the deportee is free to go anyplace except back. The jailed is not free to go any place. Plus the food is better if you’re deported, even if the choice is a Honduran version of the Club Fed.
I suppose you can call it a coup. In which case, coups aren’t going to be considered all that bad any longer, are they? “Is this one of those legal, constitutional coups where the democratic process continues? Or the other kind?”
Shame you had to go and do this, on account of you just discredited your habit of calling any government change that doesn’t install a lefty for life a “coup”, with all the attendant implicit horrors. You made coups all warm and fuzzy.
I guess that’s progress.
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December 1, 2009, 2:00 pmDilan Esper says:
I suppose you can call it a coup. In which case, coups aren’t going to be considered all that bad any longer, are they? “Is this one of those legal, constitutional coups where the democratic process continues? Or the other kind?”
Look, it all worked out in the end, but I would suggest that one of the things that the international pressure may have accomplished is to let would be military coup plotters know that any attempts to do this would be met with swift condemnation by the region. The same way the attempted coup against Chavez was met with resistance and condemnation.
In other words, no, this wasn’t a “good coup”. It would have been perfectly fine to let Zelaya serve out his term, and then have the election. Free speech was shut down, a President was illegally exiled, and the military was used as a deus ex machina to change a civilian government. Those are all really bad things. And the international condemnation of it makes it less likely that anyone’s going to try to pull this crap in the future.
The fact that we now have a credible election and Honduras is moving on (as it should) doesn’t change that.
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December 1, 2009, 2:31 pmJohn Moore says:
.
Letting Zelaya serve out his term would have been expressively constitutional, IIRC. Hence there was no choice but to depose him. It looks like the only significant illegality was his forced exile. However, considering he was calling for defiance of the constitutional authority, and had an organization that would follow his wishes, the emergency measures taken may have been perfectly within reason, no matter how many buttons they pushed in the liberal pattern matching machine.
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December 1, 2009, 3:16 pmDilan Esper says:
Letting Zelaya serve out his term would have been expressively constitutional, IIRC. Hence there was no choice but to depose him.
That’s an interesting definition of the word “choice”. By your definition, every time the American courts define something as a “political question”, the political branches (or the military) have no choice but to take extraconstitutional action to enforce the Constitution.
In reality, nothing at all bad would have happened had there been no coup. Zelaya would have served out his term, there would have been an election, and there would be a new President. There was no “emergency”– just a military with itchy trigger fingers.
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December 1, 2009, 3:19 pmStrict says:
“The reason you guys are clueless is you have no idea of what the military removing civilian politicians in the middle of the night means to many Latin Americans–”
And forced or forged resignation letters. There’s a resignation letter from Zelaya which he denies writing. There was a resignation from Aristide which he claims he was forced to write.
And curfews. Curfew brings to mind Pinochet. How can a libertarian support curfews?
“The reason that being deported beats being in jail is that the deportee is free to go anyplace except back.”
Richard, whether deportation is more physically comfortable than jail is completely irrelevant to what we’re talking about here. Aristide maybe had better food and a softer couch in the Central African Republic, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t seized by the military in a coup in Haiti.
“Military people assume many cabinet positions. This did not occur in Honduras.”
Who was in the interim government? I honestly don’t know their identities. I know Micheletti, who himself was a “military person.” I also know that Micheletti appointed several “military people” and “former” death squad members to leadership positions.
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December 1, 2009, 3:20 pmStrict says:
“Here is my “everyday common understanding” of a coup: it puts the military in charge”
A coup is not the same as a military coup. For example, the United States officially declared what happened in Honduras to be a coup, but not a military coup.
The 1953 coup in Iran put the King in charge.
The 1933 coup in Germany put the democratically elected Chancellor and his political party, not the German Army, in charge.
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December 1, 2009, 3:30 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Guys, guys. Keep talking and you’ll be describing Chavez, which I suspect you would not want to do.
The military in Honduras is in charge of the elections. Don’t blame me, I didn’t write their constitution. It’s possibly because Honduras, being a developing country, has no other institution with the organization and transportation capabilities to haul all the stuff all over and back again in a timely manner.
In any event, when the court said Zelaya had to go, it was the military which had the job, legally.
What it means to other Latin Americans is interesting but it does not bear on the legality under the Honduran Constitution.
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December 1, 2009, 3:31 pmGringo says:
If after reading this comment on the double standards of the OAS, you still consider the OAS a legitimate organization, all I can say is that you and I have different standards. Also refer to my previous remark about ALBA et al.
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December 1, 2009, 4:35 pmjeffry house says:
Mitchell said: “To say “Oh the rules are there to stop strong men from undermining democracy” is a joke. That was not why it put in place by military dictators in the 1980s as they handed over some semblance of political openness.”
Actually, that is precisely why the rules are there. In Central America, winning the Presidency makes possible the targetting of an utterly vast quantity of patronage, which can be targetted to those who are willing to attend rallies and make contributions to The Leader.
Historically, it was the Mexican Revolution which insisted on the principle of “No Re-election”, first against dictator Porfirio Diax (re-elected six times), and then as part of the Revolutionary Constitution of 1917. There are streets in many cities of Mexico named “No Re-election”. The concept is as Latin American as frijoles.
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December 1, 2009, 4:36 pmDilan Esper says:
Gringo:
All international organizations have double standards. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have value.
For instance, the UN is absolutely awful when it comes to all things Israel-related. But that doesn’t mean that they have not been quite useful in many other situations.
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December 1, 2009, 5:30 pmGringo says:
While one would consider the UN’s work on WHO or FAO to be useful, the double standards it has exhibited on its Human Rights Council, for example,mean that the UN Human Rights Council is discredited. Similarly, given the double standards of the OAS regarding Cuba and Honduras, the OAS is discredited on its stance on Honduras. You might also investigate OAS responses to complaints of human rights violations in Venezuela. It’s a little more difficult to get its attention focused on Venezuela than on Honduras.
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December 1, 2009, 5:59 pmGringo says:
And you saw no incongruence whatsoever in such paradigms of democracy as Chávez, Ortega, and Castro being the strongest initial voices against the “coup”?
No reply to this, Dilan Esper?
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December 1, 2009, 6:06 pmJohn Moore says:
Dilan Esper,
I mistyped. The correct statement, with emphasis, is:
.
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December 1, 2009, 6:31 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Gringo. Ref yr query to Dilan.
Everyone has his own heroes.
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December 1, 2009, 6:36 pmDilan Esper says:
No reply to this, Dilan Esper?
I didn’t think it merited one– I don’t think that when you have a unanimous regional reaction, “who came first” is a particularly relevant question. The bottom line is that had Obama not condemned the coup, he would have been the only leader in the entire hemisphere not to– even the conservatives condemned it. Whether Chavez tipped over the first domino is irrelevant.
BTW, it’s also worth noting that even if some of Chavez’s actions have come in for perfectly legitimate criticism, that doesn’t mean that everything he ever says is wrong or should be opposed. He happened to be right about this, and even if he were wrong, it’s not worth antagonizing an important oil supplier over a stupid issue.
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December 1, 2009, 8:08 pmGringo says:
Thugo Chavez led an unsuccessful coup in 1992 against a democratically elected government. He celebrates the coup attempt every year. So he is “right” this time when he condemns a “coup?” Yeah, right.
Zelaya was deposed for violating the Constitution. For Thugo, the Constitution is just a piece of paper. His Supreme Court has as much gravity as the Three Stooges. Ditto his legislature. Thugo’s Supreme Court and Legislature would no more oppose him than a five year old would win the heavyweight boxing championship.
The Castro brothers led an unsuccessful coup in 1953, and have held totalitarian power in Cuba for a half century. They condemn the “coup” in Honduras. Good democratic people to have on your side.
Then there is Daniel Ortega. Ortega took power by military force, which could be justified by its being against the dictator Somoza. However, once in power, Ortega and the Sandinistas were anything but aficionados of democracy. Example: Nicaragua endorsed the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan back in March 1980. Also note Ortega, like Zelaya, has tried to change his country’s Constitution to enable indefinite reelection. Just like the Somozas.
It doesn’t make you uncomfortable to have such goons on your side?
Guess not.
Regarding “unanimous regional reaction,” it is of note that the regional reaction to the election is anything but unanimous.
So much for speaking truth to power. Your point about not wanting to antagonize Thugo also gives support to my previous statement:
Perhaps all’s well that ends well. But if Honduras had not stood up to regional bullying– I have already documented the different stances that the OAS had towards Cuba and Honduras– things could have turned out a lot worse.
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December 1, 2009, 9:35 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Interesting who and what Dilan would sacrifice for that evil substance, oil.
How important is Venezualan oil, anyway? I’ve heard their maintenance has run down, the fields aren’t producing what they used to and Thugo has had to buy oil to fulfill his contracts.
And it’s supposedly difficult to refine, being “sour”.
But as long as it’s lefty oil, it’s important.
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December 1, 2009, 10:21 pmArthurKirkland says:
The myopic focus some direct toward Chavez echoes the inexplicable preoccupation some exhibit with respect to Castro’s Cuba.
It is easy and proper to discount the arguments of those who rail against Chavez while ignoring the recent Central and South American regimes at least as bad as the Chavez government — some of whose brutality has been supported, openly or covertly, by Americans in and out of government — just as it is easy and proper to dismiss the claims of those who assert that Cuba is a great threat to the United States or the worst country on Earth.
A clear-headed ranking of enemies, threats and abuses is important, as recent events in Iraq have demonstrated.
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December 2, 2009, 12:16 amGringo says:
Myopic? No, our eyes are open. If Thugo Chávez had not been involved in the Zelaya drama in Honduras, he wouldn’t be mentioned. Courtesy of Venezuelan News and Views, which linked to The Vanguard, a Spanish paper.
Changing the Constitution and enabling repeated elections: just what Chávez did. Just what Daniel Ortega is now attempting.
Since you know so much about Cuba,I’m sure the information in Renaissance and Decay is old hat to you.
Granted, Thugo has become progressively less involved as time went on, as it became increasingly clear he was backing a losing horse. But only the blind will maintain Thugo had nothing to do with the drama the last 6 months in Honduras– especially with the initial idea of the referendum.
I admit to more interest in Venezuela than the average gringo. I worked in Venezuela many moons ago. I was neutral about Chávez until I met some Venezuelans at my workplace here in the US.
And you are quite copacetic with Ahmadinejad’s recent forays to South America?
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December 2, 2009, 2:19 amRichard Aubrey says:
Years ago, Graham Greene remarked that he held no brief for the Soviets, but that the enemy of his enemy was his friend and his enemy was Ronald Reagan.
I don’t recall if he specified what was so off-putting about Ronaldus Magnus.
Dilan and AK and others whom we know could be charitably considered to be taking the view that they don’t hold a brief for lefty totalitarian governments but the enemy of their enemy is their friend. But we don’t know, although we can guess, who their enemy is.
That, as I say, would be the charitable view.
On the other hand, they might just prefer lefty totalitarianism. [Spell that fast out loud.]
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December 2, 2009, 10:14 amGringo says:
If this is such a stupid issue, then why are YOU writing so many comments about it? Just wondering.
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December 2, 2009, 10:29 amDilan Esper says:
Gringo:
You can view every issue in Latin America as the eternal struggle between the (apparently, to you) evil left and the valiant right, or you can figure out the best way for the region to coordinate activities and get along.
Even if your one-sided descriptions of Chavez, Castro, and Ortega were accurate, they are still in power, and it still benefits the people of the United States to deal with them.
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December 2, 2009, 2:08 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Dilan sure is getting flexible here.
I wonder if he’d have said the same about Noriega or Somoza.
Naw. I don’t wonder.
Probably be worth while dealing with the lawfully elected government of Honduras, too, instead of trying to poke them in the eye with a stick, right Dilan?
Right? Right?
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December 2, 2009, 3:51 pmDilan Esper says:
Yes, Richard. To use some more current examples, I think that the Saudis are absolutely awful, but that doesn’t mean we should work diligently to oppose anything they support in the international arena or support military coups against any governments that are friendly to them.
You guys really have to stop viewing foreign policy as a grand contest between left and right. The goal of foreign policy is to benefit the American people. If it benefits the American public that the hemisphere gets along (which it does), then the fact that the right wing is denied the orgasm it seeks by standing up to Chavez is not particularly relevant to our decision calculus.
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December 2, 2009, 4:01 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Dilan.
You’ve made up a picture of conservative views of foreign policy.
You’re wrong.
However, you’re happier there.
Enjoy.
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December 2, 2009, 7:53 pmRobert Goodman says:
What if a squad agrees to stop deathing in return for their favorite candidate winning? Then electing that candidate is a victory not only for democracy but also against crime!
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December 2, 2009, 8:08 pmDilan Esper says:
Richard:
Conservatives have never shown why Chavez or Castro or Ortega is such a threat that we have an imperative to oppose any government they might support. That leaves one with the conclusion that conservatives simply think that the US government should reflexively oppose anyone on the left, even if it runs counter to our interests in hemispheric harmony.
In other words, if you guys have an actual reason why who runs Honduras impacts vital US interests, you haven’t articulated it. All you guys have done is spew a bunch of bile about left-wing leaders you don’t like. Spewing bile is no substitute for actual foreign policy.
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December 2, 2009, 9:20 pmGringo says:
I repeat my question.
If this is such a stupid issue, why are you writing so many comments about it?
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December 2, 2009, 9:43 pmDilan Esper says:
Gringo:
It’s a stupid issue in 2 senses:
1. It doesn’t affect the US’ vital interests.
2. It drives the right wing to stupidity.
Since I enjoy seeing right wingers act like imbeciles, why shouldn’t I post?
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December 2, 2009, 9:57 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Dilan.
Wrong again.
You imply that Chavez & Co. can provide no threat to American interests.
There are big threats and little threats. There is more or less threat to our allies–Colombia, for example–to our basing in neighboring states. There is cronying at the UN or the OAS which, toothless as they may be, provides lefties with talking points they know are false but hope to gull the gullible.
There is cooperation on international crime, such as drugs, money-laundering.
Just for grins, if the balloon had gone up in Europe during the Cold War, one half of our supplies would have had to come from the Gulf ports through the Straits of Florida. That’s ninety miles wide and the resources needed to get the convoys through there would have had to be taken from the Third Battle of The North Atlantic. A chess piece here, one there, another some place else and somebody tells Brezhnev, “we can do it. we have the choke points and the strategic location”. He might have been wrong but it would have been hell settling the question.
I don’t go over this because I think you don’t know it. I go over this because you think I don’t know it. In those days, lefties wailed that we shouldn’t be mean to a poor Latin country which couldn’t hurt us. ‘cept for the Sov units based there, but the Sovs were harmless teddy bears.
I know the Cold War is over and we won–deal–so I use that only as an example of how what is clearly a threat can be obscured by the left. As is their goal today with other threats.
To imply that because Chavez can’t ruin our currency–Soros makes that irrelevant–or invade us that there is no, zero threat, is bogus. Not only that, clearly, and transparently and obviously bogus.
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December 2, 2009, 10:41 pmDilan Esper says:
There are big threats and little threats. There is more or less threat to our allies–Colombia, for example–to our basing in neighboring states.
If our relationship with Colombia were truly important, this would be a concern. (And no, narcotics trafficking doesn’t count– we’d be better off if we didn’t worry so much about this.)
There is cooperation on international crime, such as drugs, money-laundering.
Then I guess we shouldn’t have relationships with China, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Peru, the United Arab Emirates, or the aforementioned Colombia either, right?
I mean, you can draw up a bill of particulars against any foreign leader, Chavez included. But that doesn’t mean that these things pose serious threats.
Just for grins, if the balloon had gone up in Europe during the Cold War, one half of our supplies would have had to come from the Gulf ports through the Straits of Florida. That’s ninety miles wide and the resources needed to get the convoys through there would have had to be taken from the Third Battle of The North Atlantic. A chess piece here, one there, another some place else and somebody tells Brezhnev, “we can do it. we have the choke points and the strategic location”.
Just how paranoid are you?
I know the Cold War is over and we won–deal–so I use that only as an example of how what is clearly a threat can be obscured by the left. As is their goal today with other threats.
This is complete crap. The international “left” is concerned with making governments more responsive to the poor. Chavez, for all of his faults, replaced people who let the slums of Caracas fester without electricity.
You need to stop making up stupid and ill-informed conspiracy theories about people you disagree with. Chavez is no threat, and the American right is making complete asses of themselves over this issue.
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December 3, 2009, 2:30 pmJohn Moore says:
No, the useful fools for the international left are interested in that. The ones who actually take power (Castro, Chavez, and others) may engage in a little populist goodie give-away, but their main theme is personal power.
In the meantime, because their ideology is failed, they wreck their economies and infrastructure.
And, of course, the are perfectly happy to create buddies in other countries, wrecking more places.
Chavez, for all his faults, is a strong-man reaching for dictatorship.
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December 3, 2009, 5:45 pmDilan Esper says:
John:
1. Chavez isn’t a dictator. He has a number of dictatorial tendencies, but he also abided by the election results when the public rejected his constitutional reforms.
2. There’s no reason the US shouldn’t deal with dictators anyway. We deal with them in many other parts of the world. You guys haven’t said ANYTHING that establishes that whatever the supposed threat that Chavez presents, it is worth jeopardizing hemispheric harmony to take him on.
Chavez angers a lot of folks on the right. I get that. But pissing off the right wing does not equate to being a threat to US interests. The problem is that when it comes to socialist authoritarians, conservatives simply start acting like blubbering idiots who lose any sense of foreign policy realism.
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December 3, 2009, 10:02 pmJohn Moore says:
I agree. The reasosn Chavez is a problem is his many anti-American policies and his clear ideological and political anti-American stance. He is a friend to all of our enemies, and hence he is an enemy. Simple concept — but hard for the left to understand.
Besides, how many times has the left condemned us for dealing with autocratic governments? The answer: every time they are anti-Communist.
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December 3, 2009, 11:42 pmGringo says:
The facts do not support your claim that before Chávez, the governments of Venezuela “let the slums of Caracas fester without electricity.” Nor has Chávez been all that “responsive to the poor.”
From Access to Elelectricity in the House (Table 7.3 on page 69) we find out that in 1998 99% of urban households and 96% of all households had access to electricity in Venezuela.
For corroboration, we turn to the 2001 census:Hogares en viviendas familiares por tipo de vivienda,según tipo de artefacto y/o acceso a internet, censo 2001, which queries about the presence of various electricity consuming artifacts in the household. Of the 5,2432,88 households in Venezuela, we find out that 151,864 have none of the 13 artifacts, and 46,512 do not declare any, which total 3.7 % of the households. Which more or less agrees with the 96% access to electricity of the other study.
Contrary to what you claim, the slums of Caracas were pretty well supplied with electricity before Chávez took power. It would be helpful if on occasion you would take the time to learn something about a subject before you inform others how stupid and clueless they are regarding that subject.
There are a number of issues on which Thugo’s alleged “concern for the poor” does not translate into reality. Perhaps the most glaring issue here is the price of gasoline, which is about 15 cents US per gallon. This is not a subsidy for the poor, who cannot afford automobiles, but a subsidy for the better off who drive.
Another way that the Chávez government has subsidized the better off at the cost of the poor has been the multi-tiered exchange rate. Bolívares have traded on the open market at two to three times the official exchange rate. Until the cash crunch this year caused by the drop in the price of oil, Venezuelans who traveled abroad could purchase dollars at the official rate, resulting in many shopping trips. Today the official exchange rate is primarily used to reward friends of the regime.
Housing is another issue which shows that Chávez is not the friend of the poor he claims to be. When Chávez assumed power in 1999, Venezuela had a housing deficit. It was safe to assume that as Chávez was “concerned about the poor,” he would implement policies that would result in more housing construction. Unfortunately, housing construction under Chávez has been about half of what it was previously.
The figures are for public and private housing construction combined.
Another way the ten years of the Chávez government has hurt the poor has been the murder rate which is two-three times what it was in 1998. Who gets murdered more often? The poor in the slums. The murder rate in 1998, the year Chávez was elected – he took office in early 1999– was 19 per 100,000 . Today it is much higher. The Chávez government has stopped releasing murder figures to the UN, so the actual figure is debateable.
The current Wikipedia rate is 48 per 100,000, but I am sekptical about that because it was previously above 61 per 100,000. Some current sources put it above 60 per 100,000. In any event, the murder rate in Venezuela is much larger than it was, and it hurts the poor the most.
The vaunted health advances are not as great when the data is examined. This is from the World Bank Development Report online. Tuberculosis is about where it was: a wash. Some are better, some are worse. For example, while 92% of children aged 12–23 months were immunized for measles, in 2006 only 55% were. For Diptheria immunization for the same age group, immunizations increased from 62 % in 1998 ( 76% in 1997) to 73% in 2006. Children were previously not immunized for Hepatitus B3: in 2006 ‚71% were.
Those who claim that Chávez has been a friend of the poor need to examine the record. Moreover, the poor will be hurt by the current water and electricity blackouts/shortages, and the ongoing collapse of banks looted by friends of Hugo. ( See http://devilsexcrement.com/ and links from there. Daniel and Caracas Chronicles are recommended.For insider detail: Caracas Gringo. He has a good posting on the electricity blackouts.)
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December 4, 2009, 2:49 amGringo says:
After he lost the December 2007 referendum, billboards saying “por ahora” (for now) appeared around Caracas. Chávez also said “por ahora” after his unsuccesful coup in 1992– for now he would accept that he lost.
Thugo set up a second referendum in February 2009.
Your claim that he abided by the results of the December 2007 were correct “por ahora”- for a while.
Here is how he treats opposition candidates who win elections.
BTW Chávez ‚that “friend of the poor,” lost in Petare, a big slum.
If Chávez is not a dictator, then why is he so friendly with them? Yes , in this realpolitik world, one must deal with dictators– the US has diplomatic relations with dictators– but it is another thing to embrace them. Friends of a feather and all that .
Chávez on Saddam: -”...he’s a brother...”
Chávez on Mugabe: “You are and always will be a true freedom warrior.”
Ahmadinejad on Chávez: “I feel I have met a brother and trench mate after meeting Chávez.”
Chávez on Qaddafi: “...a friend and brother.”
Chávez on Fidel Castr:o “I am only a soldier in this battle. Fidel is our president. If we had to name a president of the world with enough powers to set it right, it would be Fidel. I believe in one decade he could set the world right.”
Chavez on Bashar Al-Assad: “We have the same political vision.”
Chávez on Lukashenko: “Here, I’ve got a new friend and together we’ll form a team, a go-ahead team. I thank you, Alexander, for solidarity and we’ve come here to demonstrate our solidarity.”
This summer Thugo took a tour. Here is where he visited: Algeria, Libya ‚Syria, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Qatar. Say no more. Also note the enemies of the US among that group.
In September 2008, Human Rights Watch’s Director for the Americas, Jose Maria Vivancos, was expelled from Venezuela. Not a dictator?
Not a dictator? Andate a Venezuela para probar, pues.(Get to Venezuela and find out.)
I have left links out so that it will get posted. Too many links, not accepted.
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December 4, 2009, 10:10 amDilan Esper says:
I agree. The reasosn Chavez is a problem is his many anti-American policies and his clear ideological and political anti-American stance. He is a friend to all of our enemies, and hence he is an enemy.
You are overusing the term “enemy”. An enemy is an adverse combatant in wartime. You can say that Al Qeada, for instance, is our enemy (hence the term “enemy combatants”). Saddam was our enemy during each Gulf War.
We are not at war with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, or Bolivia. They are not our “enemies”. They may have unfriendly governments, or enact policies adverse to our interests, but they are not our enemies.
Because you are misusing the term “enemy”, you are making Chavez’s actions a lot worse than they are.
And you can say the same thing about the quotes in Gringo’s post. It has zero effect on the interests of America when Chavez praises a world leader we don’t like. So let him do it.
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December 4, 2009, 1:51 pmGringo says:
The facts do not support your claim that before Chávez took office, the governments of Venezuela “let the slums of Caracas fester without electricity.”
From Access to Elelectricity in the House (Table 7.3 on page 69) we find out that in 1998 99% of urban households and 96% of all households had access to electricity in Venezuela.
For corroboration, we turn to the 2001 census:Hogares en viviendas familiares por tipo de vivienda,según tipo de artefacto y/o acceso a internet, censo 2001, which queries about the presence of various electricity consuming artifacts in the household. Of the 5,2432,88 households in Venezuela, we find out that 151,864 have none of the 13 artifacts, and 46,512 do not declare any, which total 3.7 % of the households. Which more or less agrees with the 96% access to electricity of the other study.
Contrary to what you claim, the slums of Caracas were pretty well supplied with electricity before Chávez took power. Certainly Chávez had support among the poor. But contrary to what you claim, it wasn’t for lack of electricity in the slums of Caracas. BTW, Chávez no longer wins the vote in the big Caracas slum of Petare.
(cut down to pass through filter.)
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December 4, 2009, 5:46 pmJohn Moore says:
What nonsense. Check Webster.
By your definition, the USSR was not our enemy in the cold war, which is absurd.
Chavez is our enemy. Only the left fails to understand that inconvenient truth.
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December 4, 2009, 8:20 pmDilan Esper says:
By your definition, the USSR was not our enemy in the cold war, which is absurd.
The USSR was our enemy only in a metaphorical sense. The cold war, remember, was a metaphor, and metaphors aren’t reality, although conservatives seem to want to make them so.
Look, simple minded right wingers get a hard-on every time they say the word “enemy”. But rational people don’t make enemies they don’t need to.
Your thinking, and Gringo’s, will get Americans killed. Thankfully, our policymakers are smarter than you guys are.
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December 6, 2009, 8:50 pmGringo says:
Dilan, one problem is that you believe you know a lot more than you actually know. Here is the definition of “enemy” from websters-online-dictionary.
By definition 3 or 4,Chávez is our enemy. Ditto was the Soviet Union. By and large I agreed with the conduct of the USG with relation to the Soviet Union. Yet during this time, while I and most others who took the trouble to consult the dictionary considered the Soviet Union the enemy, we did not go to war against the Soviet Union. Therefore your claim that my thinking will get Americans killed seems curious, at best.
While you do not consider Chávez our enemy, he does: refer to his “Yanqui de mierda” video. While he considers us the enemy, and acts accordingly, that does not necessarily mean we should necessarily respond in kind. Bush did not respond to Chávez’s outbursts, and that was most likely the correct thing to do. But there are definitely times to oppose him. For example, the US supports the results of the recent Honduran election. As you said the following, I assume that you do also.
Aligned with the US at this time in supporting the results of the Honduran election are Canada, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia. Aligned with Chávez against the results of the recent Honduran election are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Uruguay. While it is not “harmonious” to go against Chávez and his allies at this stage– all but Mexico in this group could be considered his allies– it is the right thing to do. After all, the elections were planned well before June 28. “Harmony” and doing the right thing do not always coincide.
You make unsupported statements such as “You need to stop making up stupid and ill-informed conspiracy theories about people you disagree with.” We find out that you do not know the definition of words, such as “enemy.” You make claims that are not supported by the facts: what you wrote about electricity in the slums of Caracas. Your claim that a “left-wing” government such as that of Chávez is “responsive to the poor” runs into some rather harsh realities. I suggest you check my posting at December 4@ 2:49 a.m. to give you a reality check. (For the health statistics, the base year was 1998, the year before Chávez took office. I made a mistake in writing “went from X to Y in 2006″ instead of “went from X in 1998 to Y in 2006.”)
If you knew you were winning the argument you wouldn’t have to result to insults such as “simple-minded,” “clueless”,“blubbering idiots,” say we “act like imbeciles,” etc.
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December 7, 2009, 12:09 amDilan Esper says:
You make unsupported statements such as “You need to stop making up stupid and ill-informed conspiracy theories about people you disagree with.” We find out that you do not know the definition of words, such as “enemy.” You make claims that are not supported by the facts: what you wrote about electricity in the slums of Caracas. Your claim that a “left-wing” government such as that of Chávez is “responsive to the poor” runs into some rather harsh realities
I suggest you look up the very nice piece by Tina Rosenberg (a better reporter than your cited sources) in the New York Times Magazine. She documented the positives and negatives of Chavez very compared to his predecessors very effectively.
It’s really not much different than Castro vs. Batista, except Chavez abides by election results. In both cases, you had right-wing kleptocracy give way to left-wing authoritarianism.
Personally, I’m a fan of Alan Garcia in Peru. Chavez really isn’t my cup of tea. But that doesn’t mean he is our enemy. We should have as few enemies as possible. Your approach is to define anyone who does anything the United States doesn’t like as an enemy. That approach leads to stupidity such as the push by the right wing to make France an enemy after the invasion of Iraq.
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December 7, 2009, 2:36 pmGringo says:
Interesting that you would bring up Batista, because both Batista and Chávez were army officers who led coups and were also elected. As Castro is Hugo’s buddy, one might benefit from going to the link I provided a while back on “Renaissance and Decay.” It shows the long term economic consequences of having such people in command, and also shows that contrary to Castro’s propaganda, Cuba was rather well off before 1959: such as its infant mortality rate.
I have given you documentation that Chávez’s abiding by the December 2007 referendum was only “por ahora,” for a while. Interesting that it was his old buddy General Baudel who informed him he had to accept the result of the referendum, and now Baudel is imprisoned. Not an accident, as some newspapers used to say. He abided by the results “por ahora,” for a while, and figured out how to circumvent the results. What was turned down in the December 2007 referendum is now law. Nor did he abide by the spirit of 2008 mayoral and gubernatorial elections. You shut your eyes to that evidence I already provided, of siccing Chavista mobs on opposition office holders. Here is more evidence.From Devil’s Excrement,“The Curious Case of Antonio Ledezma.” (type that into the search box at the top of the Devil’s website to bring it up.One needs to reduce links so postings do not get held up.)
That does not indicate “respecting the results of elections.” Go ahead and repeat your mantra, “Chávez abides by election results, Chávez abides by election results, Chávez abides by election results.” An examination of the facts refutes your mantra. Go ahead and repeat it if it makes you feel good. The experience of Antonio Ledezma in office demonstrates otherwise. That what was rejected in the December 2007 referendum is now law demonstrates otherwise.
Given what has been happening recently with regards to the banks, your statement about “right-wing kleptocracy” contrasted with “left-wing authoritarianism” is a knee-slapper as Chavista kleptocracy has been amply documented. It’s not as if the kleptocracy were unknown before: look at landowning in Barinas and the fallout of Maletagate in Miami. See the first two links below for more information on the recent banking news.
This Tina Rosenberg article, “The Perils of Petrocracy”, appeared on November 4, 2007 in the NYT magazine. She discusses PDVSA involvement in the missions, an Chavista innovation to PDVSA. I agree with you that it is a well written article. What she writes supports my point of view.
(links not included to enable it to not get held up, but there I have provided enough information for it to be located.)Thank you for pointing me to an article that supports my point of view: that an examination of the facts shows a lot of holes in the claim that the Chavista government has helped the poor.
The Caracas Chronicles blogsite, at the top right of its website, has a good link. “First time visitor? Start here.” One article inside, “The petrostate that was and the petrostate that is”, points out that one change between the previous governments and the Chavista government was a change from having patronage directed institutionally through the two main political parties to having the patronage personally directed through Chávez. Still the petrostate.
Tina Rosenberg, in this July 2 2006 NYT article,“The Long, Hard Road of Investigative Reporting in Latin America”, definitely supports the view that Chávez is a dictator.
Interesting you make no response to the problem I point out about “harmony” in Latin America: more countries do not accept the legitimacy of the recent elections in Honduras than do accept it.Given that Venezuela supplies us with oil, even with the devastation of PDVSA under Chávez’s control, we need to be very careful what we do and say with Venezuela. But it is Chávez who declared himself an enemy of the US, not the other way around. Since you brought up France, I might add that my opinion of France, an opinion based on contact with the French here in the US and in Latin America, changed in no way whatsoever as a result of what Chirac and Villepin did with regard to Iraq.
I cite facts to refute you, and document them. I do not recall any link you have provided to support your point of view, though you DID point me to Tina Rosenberg.Just reciting over and over mantras like “stupid right winger” in various forms or “Chavez abides by election results,” when there is ample documentation to contradict it, is not sufficient argument. That you would point me to an article that supports my point of view shows how little you know about the subject.
I need facts to be convinced, not mantras. There is no need to continue this discussion.
http://devilsexcrement.com/ banks
http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2009/12/venezuelan-banking-crisis-made-simple.html banks
http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2009/06/red-shirts-are-busy.html attack on governor’s office
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December 7, 2009, 6:51 pmDilan Esper says:
I have given you documentation that Chávez’s abiding by the December 2007 referendum was only “por ahora,” for a while.
I really don’t understand how this is different from, say, gay marriage or anti-tax advocates losing an intiative fight and saying they will be back in a couple of years with a new initiative. As long as Chavez doesn’t start implementing (as opposed to rhetorically endorsing) the constitutional changes that were rejected, there’s no issue here– he’s perfectly entitled to say that the voters got it wrong and they will be back with another initiative.
In any event, even if this statement meant that Chavez is violating the Venezuelan Constitution, this is totally irrelevant from a standpoint of US foreign policy. We have lots of allies and non-enemies out there who violate their nation’s internal laws in one respect or another.
What was turned down in the December 2007 referendum is now law. Nor did he abide by the spirit of 2008 mayoral and gubernatorial elections.
The first sentence is not true– the December 2007 referendum is not law, and the fact that he has gotten some other laws passed that give him similar powers to what he sought doesn’t make it so.
And as for “abiding by the spirit” of elections, I don’t even know what that means. It seems to me that this is an excuse for you to claim that he isn’t respecting democratic processes even when he is.
In any event, again, the US has no concern as to whether Chavez violates the internal laws of Venezuela. That may be your obsession, but our foreign policy principals have more important things to worry about.
This Tina Rosenberg article, “The Perils of Petrocracy”, appeared on November 4, 2007 in the NYT magazine. She discusses PDVSA involvement in the missions, an Chavista innovation to PDVSA. I agree with you that it is a well written article. What she writes supports my point of view.
She does have some facts in there that support your point of view. However, she also documents the things that Chavez has tried to do that his predecessors did not do.
Look, the article, in the end, points to the most legitimate criticism of Chavez, which is that he is squandering the country’s oil resources to buy short-term popularity. But you’ll notice, saying that isn’t the same thing as saying that he is evil incarnate.
And you’ll notice that THIS issue, unlike the issues you raise, is actually a national security concern of the US, as we need a stable supply of oil and Chavez’s failure to maintain crucial infrastructure and overuse of resources could cause supply problems in the future.
Venezuela criminalizes expression deemed disrespectful to public officials even if completely true.
Just like Singapore. Is Singapore an enemy of the United States? (I would mention Russia too, but you probably think Putin’s Russia is the reincarnation of the Soviet Union and we should start a new cold war.)
And, of course, the coup leaders of Honduras that you fellate at every opportunity also criminalized speech critical of the government and shut down the press.
Again, I am not here to defend Chavez’s record. There’s plenty wrong with it. But none of these things are really US interests except for his mismanagement of the oil resources. And if we cultivated a better relationship with him, we could probably move him in the right direction on that issue.
That, in any event, is what foreign policy is all about. You deal with individuals you don’t agree with, and put the proper inducements out there to get what you want. It may not give you the moral satisfaction that starting wars and declaring enemies right and left would, but your attitude will kill lots of Americans and I am not interested in killing lots of Americans.
Interesting you make no response to the problem I point out about “harmony” in Latin America: more countries do not accept the legitimacy of the recent elections in Honduras than do accept it.
They don’t feel as strongly about this as they did about the coup. As I said, even the Latin American right condemned the Honduran coup (whereas they have not come out against the Honduran elections), and anyone with any inkling of Latin American history would know why.
Since you brought up France, I might add that my opinion of France, an opinion based on contact with the French here in the US and in Latin America, changed in no way whatsoever as a result of what Chirac and Villepin did with regard to Iraq.
That’s very vague. Let’s spell it out. You think France is an enemy of the US too.
Just how many powerful governments do you wish to antagonize? And how many Americans are you willing to kill to do it?
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December 8, 2009, 1:21 pmGardner Recall says:
The citizens of Gardner, KS are currently working to recall two members of their City Council. The recall is tied up in the courts at the moment, but it should go to a vote in March of 2010.
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January 4, 2010, 12:33 amtulsa says:
Sorry bleeding heart. The “poor” who come from other countries always succeed in the USA. Surprise!!! It is the lazy fat useless moochers who live here we are always bailing out. I am tired of my hard earned money going to support them. We are a democracy so you can choose to have your money go to them. But DO NOT assume you can decide for me. Liberals love to spend others money.
As for Chavez. He is now rationing electricity. Guess you are wrong on all counts. Just like a bleeding heart!
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January 4, 2010, 1:57 pm